Unstable Plutonium Storage at Rocky Flats Raises New Concern

Substantial amounts of plutonium were stored in unstable condition or in potentially unsafe containers at the Energy Department’s Rocky Flats, Colo., nuclear-weapons plant as recently as Sept. 24, nearly three years after the plant was shut down for environmental and safety problems.

An internal memo headed “Ticking Timebombs” disclosed the situation, but the memo’s author and scientists from the department’s Los Alamos National Laboratory later agreed there was “no imminent hazard.”

“Higher-priority items are being addressed at this time,” they wrote on Sept. 25.

A senior Energy Department official said Wednesday that “this is actually a good-news story: A guy raises issues, we don’t squelch him, we do a good thorough assessment, and when we think it’s in hand, we go on to the next issue.”

But the memo received prominent television coverage Tuesday evening in Denver, where the Energy Department’s response to safety concerns at Rocky Flats long has been controversial.

After three years of cleanup work and the expenditure of millions of dollars, “it’s disgusting” that unsafe conditions still exist, said Melinda Kassen, an Environmental Defense Fund lawyer who has been a frequent critic of Rocky Flats. “They still don’t get it,” she said.

Rocky Flats was for many years the sole U.S. factory manufacturing plutonium triggers for nuclear warheads. FBI agents raided it in 1989 to investigate possible violations of environmental laws and production ceased later that year.

Rockwell International Corp., which formerly operated the plant under contract with the Energy Department, pleaded guilty last spring to five felonies and five misdemeanor violations of federal environmental law and agreed to pay a fine of $18.5 million.

The Sept. 24 memo was written by R. J. Ballenger, manager of residue-treatment technology for EG&G; Corp., successor to Rockwell at Rocky Flats.